"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

John Huppenthal, Dangerous Racist Fool

With every brief and successive generation of Tea Party spokesmen and nutjob officials, particularly in Arizona, the current ones make the previous ones seem like lily-livered liberals. If Ronald Reagan were alive today, for instance, he would have to run as a socialist.

Earlier this year John Huppenthal replaced racist Tom Horne as Arizona's Superintendent for Public Instruction, and since taking over the state's anti-cultural bureaucracy for the perpetuation of whiteness, he has made Horne's earlier efforts to end ethnic studies seem tepid. When will the Department of Justice take notice of Huggenthal's hate speech? A clip from HuffPo:

As a state administrative judge deliberates
on the fate of Tucson Unified School District's Ethnic Studies/Mexican
American Studies Program (MAS), Arizona Superintendent of Public
Instruction John Huppenthal compared the nationally acclaimed program to the Hitler Nazi Jugend paramilitary organization at a Pima County Republican luncheon last week.

In an astounding affront to Mexican American veterans
and military families, the disturbing comments were issued a week after
the 61st anniversary of the Medal of Honor award for Arizona war hero Sylvestre Herrera,
whose famous capture of Nazi troops was hailed as one of numerous acts
of bravery by Mexican American soldiers during World War II.

While Huppenthal, who aired a controversial radio ad last fall that
he would "stop la raza," is no stranger to inflammatory speech making,
this latest episode comes on the heels of Attorney General Tom Horne's
recent charge that the Mexican American Studies program "must be destroyed" and shocking testimony by a Tea Party activist at a Tucson school board meeting with his scenario for "civil war."

The questions beg:: Have the extremist Arizona politicians and their
Tea Party supporters gone too far in their witch hunt of the Ethnic
Studies Program, and at what point will the Civil Rights Division of the
US Department of Justice be summoned for an investigation?

Or, at the very least, does Huppenthal owe Mexican American veterans and MAS supporters an apology?
The Arizona Independent Daily blog posted Huppenthal's comments from the GOP gathering last week on the Tucson Citizen site:

"Huppenthal discussed the MAS practice of victimizing, or
"racismizing" students. He stated that these same practices were used in
the development of the Hitler Jugend. He talked about Nazi's efforts to
demonize one group of people in young people's minds. He stated that
sheer intellectual power will win over the public when they look at the
anti-intellectual nature of the MAS program."

According to the Wikipedia entry,
the Hitler Jugend was the second oldest paramilitary organization in
Nazi Germany that trained youth in weapons training and assault tactics,
and propagated white supremacist and anti-Semitic beliefs.

The comment is particularly disturbing in light of the fact that the Arizona Anti-Defamation League came
out against Arizona's controversial Ethnic Studies ban and declared the
Mexican American Studies program "so obviously resuscitated the desire
to learn in so many students."

Earlier this summer, in fact, an independent audit
commissioned by Huppenthal found that the Mexican American Studies
program did not violation the state ban, and concluded: "No observable
evidence exists that instruction within Mexican American Studies
Department promotes resentment toward a race or class of people. The
auditors observed the opposite, as students are taught to be accepting
of multiple ethnicities of people." The audit noted that courses in the
Ethnic Studies Program "graduate in the very least at a rate of 5
percent more than their counterparts in 2005, and at the most, a rate of
11 percent more in 2010," and "are designed to improve student
achievement based on the audit team's finding of valuable course
descriptions aligned with state standards, commendable curricular unit
and lesson plan design, engaging instruction practices, and collective
inquiry strategies through Approved State Standards."

Despite the findings of the costly audit, Huppenthal kept his campaign promise and disregarded the report in a bizarre press conference this
summer and charged that the MAS program was non-compliant. As part of
the appeal process, TUSD and MAS administrators have appeared before a state administrative hearing,
which will recommend a decision to the state superintendent. In
essence: Once the shoutin' is over, Huppenthal still has the ultimate
power over whether the MAS program should be banned or not. . . .